Just like sports, everything is not simply about the here and now just to stroke the insecure egos of man and woman. Check yourself.

Call me ideological, but I can care less.

Is something wrong with me? Am I one of the few that listened to my Mom and Pop when they drilled into our psyche “If you can’t say nothin’ nice, don’t say nothin’ at all?”

I wonder.

Maybe it was the lackluster show that exacerbated a monstrosity of ridiculous and unrelenting criticism. Maybe it’s our current culture. I don’t know. I never watch BET because I’m not attracted to it’s superficial, bubblegum, stroke the mainstream programming.

Because of Michael Jackson’s death, the 2009 NBA Draft was surreal. I didn’t watch as attentively as I have for almost 30 years. Blake Griffith obviously went one. Will he be as good as Boozer or end up like Marcus Fizer? Being from here, I wanted Tyreke Evans, but Jrue Holiday was a fine pick for the Philadelphia 76ers (will Allen Iverson return? I think so). He’ll provide versatility on both sides of the ball after the Sixers most likely lose Andre Miller to free agency (possibly somehow to the Lakers, you heard it here first). Elton Brand comes back, but the Eastern Conference just became a juggernaut after Orlando acquired Vince Carter (power move) and Cleveland acquired Shaquille O’Neal (not sold). Edge Magic. I thought after the Conference Finals that the team with more of an edge would win and now that Vince will have joined Orlando, I can see him lighting a fire under the coaching staff, bench and of course the players on the floor.

I can’t even get into the draft. I had a post I’ve been working on all day, passed out from a lack of sleep the last week and woke up to 100 text messages. Most were friends, associates, co-workers, questioning if Mike had died or not. There was a period where everyone was waiting for confirmation because the first outlet to report his death was TMZ. Ultimately, when I heard it was a shock. I’m still in shock. The majority of the texts said Mike was a big part of my childhood. Whether you like it or not, Michael Jackson is the greatest entertainer of all time. He was the reason Black folk are on MTV. His videos were events. My family and I would sit around the TV and wait for his world premiers to drop. Thriller’s video was so unique it changed the game. I remember dancing to Rock With You with my first girlfriend in sixth grade. Nothing about his talent was fake or produced in a studio. It was all him. Talent learned from him. Like they say, often imitated, never duplicated. Any video where you see dancing was influenced by Michael Jackson. Remember the cocky dude who couldn’t stay in step at the end of the Beat It video? The magnitude of his death will be felt for decades. He transcended race, class, music, life. I hope his kids were able to learn from his talent and transfer Mike’s gift to whatever potential they have embedded in their soul. God bless the entire Jackson family. Read more »

I think it was Jemele (via Stephen A.)who alerted the twitterspere about Shaq’s trade around 11 or 12 last night and for the next 3 hours the entire sports world was abuzz with reactions, rumors, and predictions for next season. I was debating Bomani Jones about what was the better draft…’84 or ’96 and also my normal Nash smash for history when the news hit. Here’s my tweet after the trade went down. For all the criticism the NBA gets, when big stuff like this goes down, there is nothing like it in sports. Shaquille O’Neal does it like no one else. Shaq’s move to join LeBron in Cleveland put the entire draft in his sickdiculous shadow. Crazy stuff. I wonder how it’s all going to play out. Is it Super Bowl time so we can find out ASAP? IMO, trades like this only exacerbate thinking that teams are better than they actually are. Dwight Howard has to be licking his Leviathan chops. Bang on him Dwight like you are the prototypical John Connor trying to eliminate John Connor from the primitive back end of Krypton. In the NBA, the best team always wins. I’m still going with Boston over LA with Andre Miller working the triangle in his home town. I’ll have a draft preview up on Ebonyjet.com later.

A Cleveland breakdown. Hope it works out for you LeBron. (Plain Dealer)

Same thing from Phoenix. Steve Kerr better get this team back on track quick. (AZ Central)

Elaborating on the intro in Part I, one has to understand that my view of life is grounded in my view of history as it relates to sports. I went hard on Ricky Rubio (Dr. Boyd and I elaborate on Rubio and also Kobe Bryant in the next part) because I don’t want history to be affected by the here and now. It is personal to me, but nothing personal to Rubio no matter what you say or think. If we improperly over hype this kid now, history will be adversely affected regardless of how his career ends up. What about Evans and Holiday? Don’t they have size? Why are their weaknesses highlighted as well as Jennings? The post was a segue into this interview, but you’ll have to wait until the last part for our chat on the 18 year old hope. In this part, we start with Black ownership. We also get into why the NBA means more to Blacks than any other race, Black reporters and the effect we potentially have on history and why his first three books are written. Simply put, this was a great conversation I had with the good Dr. and I hope you find it entertaining as well as it continues.

Looks like Rubio is sending shock waves through the league as big trades are going down with minor NBA team players. This is always a very interesting time leading up to the draft as we wait and see how teams will jockey for position before during and after Thursday’s draft. What trade would you like to see go down?

As I was finishing up another segment with Dr. Boyd that mainly dealt with Kobe Bryant and to a lesser extent Ricky Rubio, I had a feeling a trade went down. I’d heard earlier about a Rajon Rondo and Ray Allen to the Pistons for Rip, Tayshaun and Stuckey, but Joe would be stupid for making such a deal especially with Allen being in his last year of his deal. In this business you know the wheels are turning frantically leading up to the draft so don’t put to much into my thought. When you are as durable athlete as Richard Jefferson was last season, you are always going to be trade bait. The San Antonio Spurs were trying to get younger and shipped defensive stalwart Bruce Bowen, serial NBA veteran Kurt Thomas and do it all in the interior big man Fabricio Oberto to the Milwaukee Bucks for the Jefferson. All three former Spurs are in the last year of the contracts with Jefferson owed 29.2 in the last two years of his deal. Jefferson, the 8 year vet out of Arizona will provide versatile athleticism on the wing for a team looking to make one more push before Timmay gets up outta here. Obviously this was a money move for the Bucks who most likely will make a big push to resign Charlie Villanueva and up and coming Ramon Sessions after their rookie scale contracts expire after this season. If Manu Ginobli can come back anything close to what he’s been before he became injury prone, then this puts the Spurs a little closer to competing for the title once again. Bowen, 37, leaves teh Spurs with 3 championships.

Hasheem Thabeet changed last year’s tournament by his damn self. Now there are whispers he won’t amount to much in the NBA despite his above average height and shot blocking ability. I get Blake Griffith going one, but why isn’t Thabeet a consensus number 2 pick? We live blogged the Gold Medal game against Spain and Rubio’s line was an average 6 points, 6 rebounds and 3 assists. What in that line warrants a number two pick? I’ve said this many times, but foreign players have benefited basically because of a war. How many of our top stars didn’t make the trip to Athens because of security concerns only to be mad hated on by OUR own media? Nash and Nowitzki have three MVP trophies? What?!? Look, if the kid comes in and wrecks shop in the league then I’ll give him his props, but until then stop swinging on his nutsack. Straight up. I don’t care who you are. Bring your A game and debate me here or in your forum before Thursday’s NBA draft. Put up or shut up and that includes you too Lang Whitaker, Ben Osborne (hell anyone at SLAM for that matter. Especially after this garbage. Ya better than that.), Myles Brown, Doug Gottlieb, Bobby Knight, Mike Breen, Doug Collins…uh who else? I guess most of you have forgotten how talented Jonny Flynn is huh? Why is he not being mentioned in that spot? Teague will bang it on him. Curry will shoot his eye out. Hell Patrick Mills did. Maynor? Come on.

I’ve wanted to interview Dr. Todd Boyd for many years now and I’m honored to finally get the chance. I caught up with him yesterday and we kicked it for about an hour and twenty minutes. With this interview, I decided to highlight another perspective of what we talk about here daily. I also wanted to overstate the importance of having more diverse Black voices in journalism. It’s my opinion that some are threatened by a Black voice here or a another Black voice there. What they don’t understand is that by having more objectivity on any given story, history will be affected in a way teaching us all and advancing the thoughts and minds of our youth more readily. Sal, put some brothas up on the wall! No one wants to take over. I could care less about jacking someone’s job because I personally know no one can do it like me and I don’t profess to do it like anyone else. I just want to do my thing and watch the microphones get a little closer frame by frame, game by game despite knowing another name will always get the fame just the same. We don’t get into that in the first part. We talk about Dr. Boyd’s early walk…how he eventually ended up at USC as the the Katherine and Frank Price Endowed Chair for the Study of Race and Popular Culture and Professor of Critical Studies in the USC School of Cinematic Arts (Damn Doc, that’s mouthful bruh). Check out his blog. Oh, did you know he co-wrote The Wood?

Don’t misconstrue this fellas. Deal with this on a real rap level (I was there) and don’t see this as running barefoot…wild flowers in tow…with a tight ass mesh shirt and skipping with your girl in the park singing Tip Toe Through the Tulips alright?

This ain’t about that.

This is about loyalty. Loyalty amongst friends makes for a happy existence. I have very few people in my inner circle because if you can’t trust your peoples, then who can you trust? If there is no loyalty, life becomes a frustrating exercise in maddening paranoia and your mind will never be free to trust. I can smell it a mile away and I don’t care if I’m banging on bongos with calloused and bloody hands while my girl is belly dancing…both broke, hungry as hell and sleeping on wet cardboard boxes, she’ll remain forever my soul beautiful if she’s ride or die. There is no love without loyalty. Just saw on the news where a couple has been together for 80 years in nearby Springfield, PA. Now that’s love huh? Security is last on the list because it don’t mean shit if you don’t have the other two. A lot of women will disagree on this (or not) but that’s how I roll. My daughter knows to get hers without having to depend on a man. Her aunt is a great example. There is no knight in shining armor who will rescue you from the doldrums of poverty if that’s all you are looking for because when you get it, you’ll be just as unhappy as you were before. You have to go get it yourself right? Respect and honor = loyalty. What say you?

Allow me to open up by saying that I missed you guys terribly. TSF Family is as near and dear to me as my writing. The toughest time was during the NFL Playoffs and Super Bowl, it was hard to even go to the site. I felt like I had let a multitude of people down including the one person that gave me the opportunity to shine. I wish there was some warning that I could’ve given prior to my hiatus, but when the Man Upstairs calls an audible in your life; you’d better be prepared to run the hot route.

Brandon Marshall has some off field issues, granted, but even in his NFL youth is one of the most talented receivers in the league. He’s put his name on the block…which really doesn’t mean anything in today’s professional sports…and let’s for the sake of the discussion say he gets traded. If you had the keys to your organization, would you make that move and why? He either is gonna be a beast for the next 8-10 years or fall off. There will be no middle. He’s too talented for that.

Since we are on a Hip Hop vibe here the last few days, I’ll post an interview with Professor Griff in the morning. Doing an interview with Todd Boyd today. Any questions, please shoot them to my email and not on the site.